This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Monday, November 19, 2012

Remember Mayor Mike Bloomberg, with his supercilious prediction of amnesia, at the March 2010 Barclays Center groundbreaking: "And for those that say it took a long time to get here, yes it did. But nobody's going to remember how long it took. They're only going to look and see that it was done."

When it comes to Superstorm Sandy, the mayor's singing a different tune, as reported by New York Magazine's Chris Smith:

When I asked the mayor, a week after Sandy, how he interpreted the anger directed at him by storm victims, the response was classic Bloomberg: “I’d love to tell you I had something to do with creating storms,” he said cuttingly. “There’s always somebody who screams, ‘I didn’t have coffee for 24 hours!’ What an outrage! But for most people, they understand we’re in this together ... As a society, we tend to forget pretty quickly and go on to the next thing. And I’m determined we’re not going to do that.” He was asking to be judged on substance, not style. The results so far are decidedly mixed, but unambiguously crucial: Not just to Bloomberg’s political viability, but to New York’s survival.